The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism. The Anxiety of Authority

Frey, Mattias

doi:10.26530/oapen_576930

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The results showed that the discourse on cultural journalism was tightly linked to the idea of non-preferred or notorious change (see Constantopoulou, 2016;Frey, 2014;Jaakkola, 2015b). The number of articles about the crisis indicates that it is a reoccurring frame.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Cultural criticism, or the reviewing of the arts, for example, is typically thought to be dying, if not already dead, or undergoing a "permanent crisis" (Frey, 2014; see also Elkins, 2003;Elkins & Newman, 2008;Rubinstein, 2006;Jaakkola, 2015a). Similarly, it has been observed that the professional narrative of cultural journalists, art reviewers and critics draws on this kind of cultural pessimism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Producing a Drama for the Common Good: The Theatricalization of the Crisis Discourse on Cultural Journalism

Jaakkola¹

2017

OJSS

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This article examines the discourses in the coverage of cultural journalism and its alleged crisis. The economical, technological, cultural and social transformations of the 21st-century media landscape have been translated into a crisis narrative that is sustained even by the practitioners themselves. The journalistic coverage concerning cultural journalism in general-interest news outlets in the period 2010-2017 includes a variety of representations of the crisis in culture and cultural journalism in the Nordic countries. By analysing the crisis in journalistic approaches as an operative concept for debating the topic in the public sphere, the study traces the functions of the crisis discourse. In this study, they are considered by applying the Aristotelian concept of thaumaston, which reflects both the inevitability of a catastrophe and the opportunity to create a reaction. The crisis narrative thus could be productive by increasing the accountability and openness in journalism while staging a drama that promotes a pessimistic representation of the topic.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing a Drama for the Common Good: The Theatricalization of the Crisis Discourse on Cultural Journalism

Jaakkola¹

2017

OJSS

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“…Writing in a spate of fringe publications turned out on a shoestring during that period (Oxford Opinion, Movie, Motion, Definition), a younger generation of aspiring critics attacked establishment writers and their illustrious magazines for their lack of precise attention to visual style, for prioritizing evaluation over careful analysis and for unexamined prejudices towards popular Hollywood genre films. 8 With a similar emphasis, Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan also invite a reconsideration of the poor esteem in which film criticism has been held in academic film studies. 9 With reference to Stanley Cavell's reflections on the functions of criticism they tease out the sense in which a critical perspective issues from a singular, subjective experience but one that becomes contestable when directed towards others and justified with reference to detailed evidence located in the object of criticism.…”

Section: Reassessing Film Criticismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevating the Film Review: Critics and Critical Practice at the Monthly Film Bulletin

MacDonald¹

2016

Film Studies

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This article focuses on the Monthly Film Bulletin, a magazine devoted to what is often regarded as the lowliest and most ephemeral form of film criticism: the film review. Studying the Bulletin's publication history, with a particular emphasis on the 1970s, the article challenges the dismissal of 'journalistically motivated' film criticism in academic discourse. It argues that the historical interest of the Bulletin's late period lies in its hybrid identity, a journal of record in which both accurate information and personal evaluation coexisted as values, and in which a polyphony of individual critical voices creatively worked through a routinised reviewing practice and a generic discursive format. Keywords criticism, film reviewing, political modernism, counter-cinema, Monthly Film BulletinFilm studies established itself as an academic discipline by turning its back on film criticism. In Britain, in a context of expanding higher education provision, the push to embed the study of film in universities -an agenda supported by the British Film Institute (BFI) education department -involved the self-conscious alienation of film study from film criticism. Symptomatic of this breach, or rather enacting it, film criticism was consistently attacked in the journal of the Society of Film Teachers, Screen, when it was re-launched in 1971. Screen's editorial board announced that its freedom from the routine journalism of other film magazines, a privilege afforded it by a grant-in-aid from the BFI, provided an opportunity and a responsibility to promote 2 the development of theories of film. Theory, it was said, would introduce an attitude of self-awareness, rigor and self-criticism that were considered to be entirely absent from English film criticism, the achievements of which were, in Claire Johnston's withering estimation, 'almost primitive'.1 Screen would 'go beyond subjective taste-ridden criticism and try to develop more systematic approaches over a wider field.' 2 Hostile to 'massively available criticism', Screen agitated for a shift in the agency producing legitimate film knowledge from cinephile magazines and the professional writers and journalists who wrote for them, to the university and educational professionals. Those of us now situated in academia are both the beneficiaries of the ambition to theorise and the inheritors of a prejudice towards writing that derives from a journalistic context.In other words, the making of film studies as an academic discipline was marked by a foundational act of boundary work which resulted in the rejection or subsequent cooption of journalistic film criticism. 3 Broadly intervening in the current reconsideration of film criticism and cinephilia in film studies, this article focuses on worked through a routinised reviewing practice and a highly generic discursive format. Reassessing Film CriticismOver the last few years there has been a growing interest in engaging film criticism within film studies; not as a primitive, untutored other, evolutionary precursor to the...

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“…When they are addressed in public, or referred to as societal institutions, cultural phenomena such as cultural journalism, criticism and the arts tend to be met by a certain amount of pessimism. Cultural criticism, or the reviewing of the arts, for example, is typically thought to be dying, if not already dead, or undergoing a "permanent crisis" (Frey, 2014; see also Elkins, 2003;Elkins & Newman, 2008;Rubinstein, 2006;Jaakkola, 2015a). Similarly, it has been observed that the professional narrative of cultural journalists, art reviewers and critics draws on this kind of cultural pessimism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2017

OJSS

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Theatricalization is an important aspect of social life in general, of political life in particular. Aspects of the political scene and action are given in mass and new media discourse as well as in mass cultural productions (as "narratives" of the contemporary reality). Given that people understand reality first of all on the symbolic level, the analysis of these narratives is an ideal approach of the meaning given to politics and communication nowadays: images of the economic crisis, of the migrants and/or refugees, of identities (given by media discourse or by mass cultural productions), constitute a basic imprint of the expressions of the current "social myths". We emphasize on the concept of theatricalization as a constitutive social (and political) symbolism and on the importance of theatricalization in the contemporary communication. Because diverse narratives symbolize our reality, we focus on particular contemporary social myths; myths may be not real but they influence reality because they symbolize it (they explain it, they justify it and eventually they could make it change). In this sense, we consider this thematic volume as quite revealing for the contemporary communicational trends and for the contemporary (globalized) society.

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The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism. The Anxiety of Authority

Cited by 18 publications

References 2 publications

Producing a Drama for the Common Good: The Theatricalization of the Crisis Discourse on Cultural Journalism

Producing a Drama for the Common Good: The Theatricalization of the Crisis Discourse on Cultural Journalism

Elevating the Film Review: Critics and Critical Practice at the Monthly Film Bulletin

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